vaccine hesitancy
Child vaccination rates, already down because of COVID, fall again
Child vaccination rates dipped into dangerous territory during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when schools were shuttered, and most doctors were only seeing emergency patients. But instead of recovering after schools reopened in 2021, those historically low rates worsened, according to new data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts fear that the skepticism of science and distrust of government that flared up during the pandemic are contributing to the decrease.
Study: More Republicans than Democrats likely died of COVID
It’s already known that hundreds of thousands of Americans would still be alive if every eligible person had gotten vaccinated against COVID-19. Now new research strongly suggests that many more of those “excess deaths” in Ohio and Florida were among people with Republican voter registrations. It’s perhaps unsurprising that Republicans were more reluctant to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, which has so far killed more than 1 million in the United States and more than 6.5 million worldwide.
Year in review: North Carolina and COVID-19
This year started with the promise of new COVID-19 vaccines that could push North Carolina and the country beyond the pandemic. It ends with the rise of a new COVID-19 variant that once again has the state and the world on guard. COVID-19 cases spiked after last year’s Christmas holiday. Infections caused by the delta variant, which spread more easily than earlier ones, led to another surge this summer that filled hospital beds.
Amid our fellow citizens’ foolish choices, how do we maintain our empathy?
A distant cousin of mine recently died of COVID-19. We had long ago lost touch when we both moved from our North Dakota hometown, me to Minnesota by way of stops in Florida and Georgia, and she to Texas, where she worked as a teacher, got married and raised a family for more than 30 years.
Orphaned, infected, in crisis: How the pandemic is traumatizing and causing lasting harm to children
WASHINGTON — The coronavirus pandemic has brought heartbreaking consequences for millions of U.S. children, even as most avoided serious illness themselves, pediatric experts told Congress on Wednesday. Take, for instance, a young girl from Tennessee named Sophia, whose story was relayed by Dr. Margaret Rush, president of Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University.
Should the unvaccinated be a lower priority for health care?
As hospitals reach capacity, the ethics of who is prioritized in triage gets murky The Hippocratic oath requires doctors to treat all patients equally — but what happens when you run out of doctors? This isn’t the first time medical staff and hospital beds were in short supply during the pandemic. There is, however, something notably […]
Our nation seems to be broken, but…
I am angry. You are angry. Hell, the entire nation is angry. But what makes this such a challenging time is that we are not all angry about the same things. I am angry that we have developed vaccines that dramatically prevent the spread of COVID, but that in much of the country, the vaccine itself is treated as if it were the plague.
The resistance to vaccines and masks: Decades of anti-government propaganda take their toll
“I just don’t trust the government.” That’s at the heart of the explanation provided by millions of Americans these days who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19, or even to wear masks. While these doubters and deniers advance all manner of more specific rationales...